Athlete Runs Olympic Dash For Teen-ager

April 13, 1986|By Neil Santaniello, Staff Writer

PALM BEACH GARDENS — To the runner, winning was everything.

So Ann Cunningham, 19, forgot about good sportsmanship and bared her soul. After sprinting her heart out and placing second in the 100-meter dash during the district 10 Special Olympics summer games Saturday, she burst into tears.

As the Vero Beach girl stood at the finish line, sobs racked her slender but imperfect frame, a body whose movements were robbed at birth of the grace they might have had. Spinal meningitis and cerebral palsy did that to her.

``C`mon Annie, you`re almost there,`` her mother Wanda, a former special olympics games coordinator, had screamed from the sidelines, looking as if she were about to leap onto the track and pull the girl along.

Now, at the end of the race, mother and daughter grabbed onto each other in the middle of the track with the tightness and closeness of a wrestler`s hold, one comforting the other, oblivious to the crowd around them at Palm Beach Gardens High School where the games were held.

It wasn`t the loss of a first-place blue ribbon that prompted Ann`s outburst. It was something else.

This race was to be for Mark. She wanted to win it for him, Mark Stickell, 18, her boyfriend, constant companion, schoolmate and best friend for a decade. The summer games involving 1,200 athletes from eight counties, including Palm Beach and Broward, had been dedicated to him.

A special olympics runner with a slew of ribbons and prizes like Ann, Mark died a week ago at his home in Vero Beach.

His death hit her, Ann said tearfully, ``Like a brick wall.``

``He was a healthy as a horse,`` she said.

At the games, runners from their school, The Wabasso School for Exceptional Children in Vero Beach, wore black ribbons to mourn the loss of the man who had gained the admiration and love of everyone who knew him.

Mark`s parents knew that Ann ran the race for Mark. Ed and Cynthia Stickell came up to Ann after the race and hugged her. Then they reminisced about Mark, who died April 6 of a heart attack he had been stricken with during a seizure.

The youth`s parents said that doctors had not expected much of their son, who was brain-damaged at birth.

``At one time, we thought he wouldn`t walk,`` Ed Stickell said.

The youth went on to compete in 50- and 220-yard dashes, the softball throw and 440-yard relay races in local, district and state olympics games. He brought home a gold medal in the run-dribble-shoot event during state games in Daytona Beach.

Another gold medal he had won in local competition for the 400-meter dash dangled from his mother`s neck Saturday. She wore it and the shirt her son wore for races to the games.